In a checkout counter of a store, an increase in the number of customers desiring accounting results in a queue for accounting, which makes the customers wait for a long time. However, if it is possible to ascertain a stay condition of a customers in the vicinity of the checkout counter, that is, how many customers are staying in the vicinity of the checkout counter, an improvement in customer satisfaction and an effective store operation can be achieved by considering an improvement measure at the time of operating the store, on the basis of the stay condition of a customer.
As a technique related to a desire to ascertain such a stay condition of a person, a technique of acquiring stay information regarding a stay condition of a person within a target area, generating a heat map image obtained by visualizing the stay information, and displaying the heat map image on a display device has been known hitherto (see Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 2009-134688). Using of such a heat map image allows a user to ascertain, at first sight, a stay condition of a person within a target area, that is, where and how many persons are staying, and thus it is possible to improve user convenience.
Only in the heat map image obtained by visualizing stay information, it is difficult to ascertain a stay condition of a person in association with a position within the target area, that is, it is difficult for a user to ascertain where the person is staying within the target area. For this reason, in the above-mentioned technique of the related art, a plan view of the target area is used as a background image, and a heat map image is superimposed thereon and displayed. Particularly, in the above-mentioned technique of the related art, stay information is acquired from images captured by a plurality of cameras that share and image a target area, and one heat map image is generated from the stay information. For this reason, it is necessary to use a plan view of the target area as a background image. However, when a heat map image is generated from an image obtained by capturing the target area using one camera, it is easy to use the image captured by one camera as a background image.
However, as described above, when a captured image is used as a background image, the background image is a captured image at a certain point in time, while a heat map image is an image generated from captured images at a plurality of times within a predetermined measurement period of time. For this reason, the background image and the heat map image do not match, that is, an actual stay state of a person appearing in the background image and a stay state shown in the heat map image may be greatly different from each other. Accordingly, when the background image and the heat map image do not match, there is a problem in that a user may be given an uncomfortable feeling.